Now I want you to turn in your
Bibles to Proverbs, the book of Proverbs chapter 14. Proverbs chapter 14. We're in
a section of Proverbs that was written by King Solomon, the
king of Israel, David's son. And this is a section of those
Proverbs which are known as Proverbs of Contrast. Each one presents
a positive and a negative. Just to give you an idea, look
at verse 30 of Proverbs 14. A sound heart is the life of
the flesh. Here's the opposite. But envy
the rottenness of the bones. There's the contrast. What is
a sound heart? A sound heart is a A heart of
sound judgment, that's what it is. It's a regenerated heart,
a new heart that knows the difference between right and wrong, good
and evil. And of course that comes with a real heart knowledge
of and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And how, who God really
is, who I really am. And then he says in verse 31,
he that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his maker. You know, the Lord
said, blessed are the poor, the poor in spirit. But to reproach
the poor is to, to oppress the poor is to reproach the maker.
God's the one who made them. And there's the opposite. But
he that honoreth him hath mercy on the poor. Verse 32, the wicked
is driven away in his wickedness. Here's the opposite, here's the
contrast. But the righteous hath hope in his death. Who are the
righteous? Well, they're those who are in
Christ. And you have hope in His death, but even when you
die you have hope because this world is not our home, this life
is not the end. We have the hope of eternal life
in Him. And then verse 33, Wisdom resteth
in the heart of him that hath understanding. When I think about
that, I think about in 1 John 5 how the Son of God has come
and given us an understanding that we may know Him that is
true. Here's the contrast, but that which is in the midst of
fools is made known. Now here's my text, verse 34. And the reason I'm preaching
on this is I've heard it in the last week so much in light of
what our Supreme Court has done. where the Supreme Court, as you
know, unless you've been living under a rock somewhere or in
a cave, you know what they did about homosexual marriage. They made that a legal thing.
They've gone about trying to redefine marriage, which they
cannot do because they're not the ones who defined it. God
did. God defined marriage. He defined it in the garden as
one man, one woman, uniting together. and cleaving to each other. But
they've tried to redefine it as to be legal, an act of marriage,
either between two men or two women, or who knows where that's
going. But I've heard this verse here
quoted quite a bit this week from different preachers and
pastors. And sad to say now, and I'm not just saying this
to be critical now, sad to say I believe they've missed the
main point of it. I can say I agree with them about standing against
the Supreme Court's ruling. It's an evil ruling. It's a wicked
ruling. It's against God. It's against
the truth. It's against nature. It's even against conscience.
Now, it's not against the depraved conscience or the reprobate mind. But it is. It's wrong. But here's
what the verse says. Righteousness exalteth a nation. Now that's the title of the message.
Righteousness exalts a nation. But now here's the contrast.
But sin is a reproach to any people. Sin is a reproach to
any people. Verse 35 says, the king's favor
is toward a wise servant. Contrast, but his wrath is against
him that causeth shame. That word shame in verse 35 and
the word reproach in verse 34 are the same word, just translated
differently. So righteousness exalteth a nation,
but sin is a shame or a reproach to any people. Now the first
thing I want you to know, I've got about six things I want you
to consider as we consider verse 34. Righteousness exalts a nation. Sin is a reproach, a shame to
any people. The whole context of this now,
I want you to understand, as I said, this was written by King
Solomon, the King of Israel. Now these are the words of God,
understand? When I say that, I mean that
King Solomon was the human instrument that God used, the Holy Spirit
used to inspire these words. And it was written to the nation
Israel under the Old Covenant. Now you need to understand that.
You see, that old covenant was a conditional covenant placed
upon that nation under which there were certain conditions
of obedience and abstinence that the nation as a whole And usually
we would say from the leaders of the nation, at least the majority
of the nation, that there were conditions of obedience and abstinence
that they were to adhere to based upon which God would bless them
in a temporal, ceremonial, temporary way as a nation. You understand
that? And understand this now. The
old covenant law was never intended to be or given to the nation
Israel as a way of salvation. It wasn't a way of salvation.
In fact, it was given to the nation to show them the impossibility
of salvation by adhering to certain commandments and abstaining from
certain sins. How do you understand that? So
that when you go back into the Old Testament and read the commandments
of the law, where there are conditional promises made, you need to understand
that the nation as a whole, in the vast majority of their history,
failed to meet those conditions. And you need to understand another
thing, too. Had you been there with them, had I been there with
them, we would have failed too. So don't look down on the nation
Israel because they're sinners. And you know why you can't look
down on them because they're sinners? Because you are too.
I am too. In fact, we can say it this way.
If salvation were conditioned on us, keeping certain commands,
even believing, or abstaining from certain sins, we would fail. And if you don't believe that,
you don't know yourself yet. In fact, the way the scripture
would talk about that is if you don't believe that, you're full
of guile. You're not being honest about yourself. Who was it that
the old poet said, know thyself? I can't remember who it was.
I think it was an English poet. But he said, know thyself. We don't
know ourselves until God shows us ourselves in the reality. And then think about that statement
in Psalm 39.4. Man at his best state. Now let's think about man at
his best state. altogether vanity. Now keep that
in mind, and I want you to consider some things when we consider
this verse. Righteousness exalts a nation.
Number one, what is righteousness? What exactly is righteousness?
Well, there are people who believe, well, righteousness is doing
the best you can. Oh, no. No, righteousness is
not doing the best you can. You see, when it talks about
righteousness exalting a nation, by whose standard are we to measure
righteousness? Yours? Mine? The President's? The Supreme Court's? We're to
measure righteousness by God's standard. Now that puts it in
a whole different ballpark, doesn't it? Concerning us, especially. What
is God's standard of righteousness? Well, let me say it this way.
First of all, if you want to see God's standard of righteousness
in action, there's only one person that you can look to. And I don't
want to disappoint you, but it ain't me. It's not the preacher. I used to, when I was a boy growing
up in a Southern Baptist church, there used to be this one fellow.
He was the Sunday school superintendent. They called him Brother Ward.
I thought that was his first name. I thought his first name
was Brother. But they called him Brother Ward. And I heard
several men in that church over the years, they said, boy, I
wish I could pray like Brother Ward, or I wish I could do this
like Brother Ward, or be as faithful as Brother Ward. And nothing
against Brother Ward, as they called him. He's not the standard. You see, if your goal is to be
like me or to be like this one or that, you're shooting way
too low. There's only one person that you can see righteousness,
and that's Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory. What does that mean? Well, that
means this. If He's God's standard of righteousness, if I don't
measure up to Him in every way, thoughts, motives, actions, what
happens? I fall short. You see, man's standard of righteousness
always falls short. Man is commanded by God never
to look to himself for righteousness. And how does the Lord put it?
Well, I give you several scriptures, but the one that I quote most
often is Acts 17 31. where Paul was preaching to the
Greek philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, and he says, God has
commanded all men everywhere to repent, change your thinking
on this issue, based on what? Verse 31 says, because God hath
appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness
by that man whom he hath ordained See, not one you've ordained
or I've ordained, but one whom He hath ordained, in that He
hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him
from the dead. That's Jesus Christ. You say,
well, I wish I could love like oh so-and-so. Well, unless your
love and oh so-and-so's love measures up to the perfection
of love seen in Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, Emmanuel,
unless it measures up to Him, it's not righteousness. There were times in Israel's
history when they sought righteousness by their word. You know, if you
read Israel's history, turn to Romans chapter nine with me.
You know, if you read the history of Israel in the Bible, you know,
it doesn't hold back, does it? I mean, there's no, you know,
a lot of times men write biographies about men they admire or women
they admire, and they sugarcoat it, you know. You know how it
is. I mean, we grew up talking about
George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and never, I
don't think he ever did that, to be honest with you, but I
don't know for sure, it doesn't matter. But it's a good story. But the
Bible's not like that. The Bible lays it all bare in
truth. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And in Israel's history, there
was a lot of, listen, there was a lot of idolatry, there was
a lot of debauchery, there was a lot of immorality. Somebody,
you know, people look at our day and they look at what the
Supreme Court, and let me say, I don't want to belittle my aversion
to what happened there. I don't want to at all. But some,
I've heard people say, oh, it's just getting, it's worse than
it's ever been. Well, let me ask you this. What if the people
of the United States just all of a sudden decided that they
were going to sacrifice their infant children, and I know people
say, well, they do in abortion, but I'm talking about in a religious
way now, sacrifice their infant children by burning them in the
arms of a statue called the God Moloch. That happened in Israel. How bad can it get? Let me say
this. It's bad. I said it last week,
our country's going to hell in a handbasket. I believe that. I don't like it. I fear for my
children and my grandchildren. But I want to tell you something.
How bad can it get? Just like the old West Virginia
farmers who stood on the shore looking at the ocean they'd never
seen. One said that, I didn't realize how big it was. And the
other one said, well, man, that's just the top of it. How bad can
it get? We've just seen the top of it.
I'm serious. Just the top of it. We really
don't have any idea about how bad it can get. It can get worse.
You know that. But you see that in Israel's
history. But now you do see a few times in which it could be said
that the nation Israel meaning the leaders, the king, the leaders,
and the majority of the people were in obedience to the terms
of the Old Covenant, ceremonially, things like that. There are very
few times, and one of the times you could talk about was under
King David's rule, under Solomon, but even those, even those went
to pot, you know, read it. Now here's what I'm saying. Okay,
if Israel's obedience to the Old Covenant law Did it make
them righteous? Did it exalt them as a nation? Well, look at Romans 9 and verse
31. He says, but Israel, which followed
after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law
of righteousness. Now, to follow after the law
of righteousness means they tried to keep the law of Moses in order
to be righteous. Did they make it? No. have not
attained. Wherefore or why? Verse 32. Because they sought it not by
faith, but as it were by the works of the law. Now what is
it to seek righteousness by faith? I'll tell you exactly what, it's
to look to Jesus Christ for all righteousness. He says, they
stumbled at that stumbling stone. As it is written, Behold, I lay
in Zion on a stumbling stone. That's a prophecy of Christ in
the book of Isaiah. And a rock of offense, and whosoever
believeth on him shall not be ashamed. You see, there were times in
their history when they refused to seek righteousness at all.
That was a reproach to them. There were times in their history
where they sought righteousness by works of the law. But that
didn't exalt him. So what is righteousness? Perfect
satisfaction to God's law and justice in every way. All right,
here's the second thing. Where is righteousness to be
found? Well, I've already said it. It's only by the grace of
God in Jesus Christ. Where is my righteousness? It's
not my obedience, it's his obedience. Where is my righteousness? It's
not my suffering, it's His suffering. Where is righteousness? It's
not my death, it's His death. It's His righteousness accounted,
charged to me. As my sins were charged to Him,
accounted to Him, imputed to Him, His righteousness is charged
to me. Over there in Proverbs 14, that's
where two times this statement is made. Once in Proverbs 14,
12, and another time in Proverbs 16. And here's what it says,
there is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death. And here's the point, man by
nature believes the way of religion, the way of sincerity, the way
of love, the way of obedience works, is the way of righteousness,
and it is not. Righteousness cannot be found
there. Righteousness cannot be attained there. Listen to me. We should, as human beings, responsible
human beings, and especially as saved human beings, sinners
saved by grace, we should publicly and vehemently oppose any action
of the state or the government or the courts that goes against
the word of God. There's no doubt about that. The law of marriage. Where do
we find it? It's in the Bible. That's where it comes from. It
comes from God's Word, ordained by God for the happiness and
the procreation of the human race. Have you ever seen two
homosexuals procreate? No. They fornicate, but they
don't procreate. In fact, if homosexuality were
natural and it were the way of things, that would be the end
of the human race. Some fool said, well, we can
adopt. Well, where are they going to come from? On the pumpkin
patch or something? My dad used to tease me and say
I was hatched out on a tree stump. Well, you know that's not the
way of things. What is homosexuality? It's fruitless
love. That's what it is. No life can come from it, only
death. You see, and that's why it's
no reflection of the love of God. Because the love of God
is not fruitless. The love of God ensures the salvation
of His people based on the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. Homosexuality doesn't fulfill
that. And then marriage was ordained to typify Christ and his church.
The love, the holy love of marriage between a man and a woman was
ordained by God to typify Christ the husband and his bride the
church. Read it in Ephesians chapter
5. It's a beautiful thing. But now here's three things to
keep in mind on this issue. First of all, as we oppose sin,
As we stand against the state, the courts, or whoever goes against
God, let us not do it self-righteously as if we too are not sinners
who deserve nothing but death and hell and condemnation from
God based on our works. We won't turn there, but read
Luke chapter 13 sometimes. You remember when the Lord was
talking to the Jews about the catastrophes that happened In
their vicinity, there was a tower that fell on people. That's a
natural disaster, they say. And then another where Pontius
Pilate had a group of his soldiers come in and slaughter a bunch
of the old covenant worshipers. And you remember what Christ
asked them? He says, now, in your mind, do you suppose that
those people who died from that natural disaster and from that
act of a tyrant, do you suppose that the reason that they went
through that is because they were greater sinners than you.
Well, that's the way a natural man thinks. I remember when,
what was the hurricane that came through New Orleans? Katrina. I remember when Hurricane Katrina
came through. A lot of these fundamentalist preachers stood
up and said, well, that New Orleans is such a sinful city, they got
the judgment of God. Oh, my soul. Do you hear that? What if God gave me today what
I deserve and what I've earned. It would be nothing but damnation
and death. That's right. And that's why
he told them, Christ told them, except you likewise repent, you'll
perish. So let us not do it in a self-righteous
way as if to say we deserve better. No. Secondly, We cannot stand
with false religion in this matter so as to indicate or imply that
anything we do by way of obedience or abstinence makes us righteous
before God. I thank God that I'm not caught
up in that debauchery. Don't you? But that doesn't make me righteous.
And here's the third thing. Our mandate, now listen to me,
our mandate from Christ is to preach, witness, and live by
the gospel. That's what we're here to do.
We're to preach the gospel. We're not to picket and all this
stuff. We're to preach the gospel. We're
to preach righteousness can only be found by God's grace in and
by the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else is an abomination
before God. And as heinous and abominable
as homosexuality is, it's against God, it's against nature. Let
me tell you something, the greatest sin that any person can commit
is to approach God for salvation, for acceptance, for blessing
or reward based on anything other than the blood and the righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's the worst of all. So though
we stand against homosexuality, we cannot stand with false religionists
who promote a false gospel, we have to be separate from all
who would promote that. Well, here's the third thing.
In the history of the world, among the nations of the world,
has there ever been a righteous nation? He says righteousness
exalts a nation. Has there ever been one? Well,
if we measure righteousness by God's standard, no. Not even
the good old U.S. of A. One nation under God. How many
gods are there? Wasn't this country founded on
Christianity? No. The founding fathers had
a respect for a god. Mainly they were deist, which
that's a religion that believes in an impersonal god who has
no dealings with the affairs of men. He's certainly not the
god of the Bible. who works all things after the
counsel of his own will. They didn't believe Jesus of
Nazareth was God. They didn't believe in the miracles.
They had some respect for the Bible. You can find quotations
from them where they talked about how the Bible's a great book. But there's all kinds of religion
in the world who talk about how the Bible's a great book. They
don't know what it says. Some believe the false gospel
of the flag. Certainly somebody who dies in
the service of this country goes to heaven. Well, if that's what
you believe, then stop talking about salvation by grace, and
really you're no better than the Muslims, because you know
the only sure way for a Muslim to get to heaven is to die in
the service of his religion. There are other ways to get there,
but the only way they can have real assurance of getting there
is to die for Allah. Well, that's salvation by works.
If we measure righteousness by God's standard, no. If we measure
righteousness by man's standard, we can talk about the dictates
of natural conscience. We can talk about justice. Listen. Listen now. We can talk about
all these things in the realm of man's standard, and I believe
And I think you'll agree with me that we have been so blessed
of God to live in what I call the greatest nation in the world. I believe we have been. We have been so blessed and so
privileged. The freedoms that we have, the
men and women who died for that freedom, I thank God for them.
I'm not going to say that gets them automatically into heaven
because that would be against the gospel, but I thank God for
them. Anybody who's given their life in service of our country,
I thank God for. I thank God for our Constitution.
I can tell you right now that I believe that among the history
of nations, our country is the best of the best. Now, it's going
downhill. But it's the best of the best.
But now here's the issue. Man at his best state is altogether
vanity when it comes to salvation. We as believers pray and desire
our leaders to act in justice, morality, equity, even compassion
towards the poor. We want to live in a society
that does not flaunt our our natural sinful desires and legalize
them. But my friends, make no mistake
about it, the righteousness that exalts a nation is on the whole rejected by all
nations of men because Christ is. We're coming into the time when
it seems like it's going to be a national problem. Man by nature
does what's right in his own eyes. But here it is. Even the best
in this life is only temporary. Isn't that right? And even the
best falls short. Falls short. Well, here's another
thing to consider. What about persecution? Well,
if the government persecutes us over our stand against sin,
any sin, What are we to do? We're to defy the government.
We're to obey God. If the government passes a law
or makes a ruling that denies our right to preach the gospel,
what are we to do? Let's preach it. What did Peter
say? He said, whether I should obey
you or obey God, you judge. But understand this now, when
we talk about persecution, if you look at the Bible, who were
the greatest persecutors of the true church? the most religious
people of the day. Ain't that right? They were the greatest. I know
unbeliever, immoral people like the Roman Empress of Nero. He persecuted the church. He
was an ingrate, a pervert. But the greatest persecutors
were the religious majority. So yes, if we're persecuted,
we're to stand against it, and we will only do it by the grace
of God. And then next, here's the fifth thing, the lesson to
be learned is what I said before, man at his best states altogether
vanity. The best nation, the best person,
morally and ethically, cannot be made righteous by his works.
The best will not cleanse us from sin. The best will not change
our nature. Man by nature will always call
good evil and evil good. That's what the scripture teaches. Man by nature will do whatsoever
is right in his own eyes. But let me conclude with this.
Here's the sixth thing. He says, righteousness exalteth
a nation, but sin is a reproach. Do you know there is in reality
one righteous nation? Do you know what that righteous
nation is? It's the collective body of God's elect, redeemed
by the blood of Christ, justified by His righteousness, and brought
into the kingdom by the Holy Spirit. It's the nation of spiritual
Israel. That's who it is. Do you believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ? Do you rest in Him? as your only
hope of righteousness and salvation and forgiveness. If you do, then
you're a citizen of a righteous nation. But let me tell you something
about righteous nations. Number one, they have a righteous
king. And the only righteous king there
is, is Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. And number two, they're
made up of righteous people. And the only righteous people
there ever were, are now, or ever will be, are those who are
made righteous in Christ. by the grace of God, washed in
his blood, clothed in his righteousness. That's the only righteous nation
there is. And that's a nation that'll continue
forever and ever and ever and will never, never be conquered
and never be corrupted because of the grace of God in him.